His Luna's Forgotten Scars novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Boy at the Creek
A coughing pup stops Rowena at the border, she walks him home, and a cold Alpha grabs her. He says her mate has known his name for a year.
A boy no taller than my hip stepped out of the ferns and told me I was in trouble.
I was kneeling on the creek bank with a basket of yarrow and nettle.
Brindle Creek's border stones were thirty yards behind me.
Ewan had said it on my first day out of bed. "Never cross the water."
It was his only rule, and I had never asked why.
I had one year of memory, and every day of it was in his pack.
He told me I had been found hurt and half drowned, and that the blow to my head had taken everything before.
I believed him, because every night he sat on the edge of the bed and handed me a cup of his sweet bitter tea.
He watched me finish it, and then he kissed my forehead.
The boy was about six, with dark hair, grey eyes and a good wool coat torn at one knee.
He stood on the far bank with his chin up.
"Father sent me to bring you home," he said. "You've made enough trouble."
I laughed, because he was so serious.
I got up and held out my hand. "I think you've got the wrong woman, sweetheart."
He stepped back before I could touch him.
"Don't. You can't get out of it by pretending." His voice shook, just once. "If you're good, you can sing me the fox song again."
I had never heard of a fox song.
Then he coughed.
It was a wet, dragging cough with a rattle at the bottom, and my whole body turned toward it.
I knew that sound.
I did not know how I knew it, but my hands were already reaching for the yarrow in my basket.
"How long have you had that?" I asked. "What's your name?"
He glared at me. "Jory. You know my name, and you know how long."
His lips had a grey tint, and he was alone at the edge of a river.
I looked back at the border stones.
I looked at the boy.
So I crossed the creek.
The water came to my knees and it was cold enough to hurt.
The moment I stepped up the far bank, the boy reached over and took my hand without looking at me.
His fingers were tiny and icy, and they fit in mine.
My throat closed, and I did not know why.
We walked a gravel drive through dark pines for ten minutes.
Neither of us spoke, and he coughed twice.
At the end of it stood a house of black stone with iron on the windows and no flag on the pole.
A man waited on the top step.
He was tall, with dark hair cut short and grey eyes, the same grey as the boy's.
He wore a black coat and stood so straight he looked carved.
When he saw me, his expression cracked for a split second.
Then a smell hit me across forty feet of gravel, sour and burnt.
It was contempt, and he was drowning the other thing under it as hard as he could.
"Rowena," he said.
It was my name.
He had said it as if he owned it.
"A year," he said, low and rough. "A whole year, Rowena."
"Your son was alone at the creek," I said. "He's sick, and he needs a healer tonight."
"He needed a mother every night."
The boy let go of my hand and ran up the steps behind his father.
He didn't look back at me, but his shoulders shook.
"Inside," the man said.
"I don't know you."
"Inside." He came down the steps in three strides and caught my wrist.
His grip was hot and hard, and he pulled me toward the door.
I had been looked after for a whole year and never once handled like that.
Something in my chest snarled.
My wolf came up behind my teeth, and I wrenched my arm out of his hand so hard I fell back onto the gravel.
He stared at his empty fingers.
I had the phone out of my pocket already, my thumb on the one name in my favorites.
Ewan answered on the first ring.
"Ro?"
"I crossed the creek, I'm sorry. I took a lost boy home and there's a man here who says he knows me, and he grabbed my arm." I was breathing too fast. "Ewan, I think I've walked into the wrong pack."
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then his voice came down the line, low and very controlled. "Where are you?"
"A black stone house. West of the water."
"Don't go inside. Don't let him touch your neck. I'm coming."
The man on the steps hadn't moved.
He had heard every word, with a wolf's ears.
He laughed, once, with no humor in it.
"Your Alpha knows exactly whose house this is, Rowena," he said. "Garrick Stroud. He has known my name for a year. Ask him why he never told you."
I stayed on the gravel, out of reach, and waited for Ewan.
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